Do You Really Need to Suffer?

A very long time ago (thankfully) I found myself to be very stuck. To qualify, whether I was in fact stuck or not wasn’t so much the issue as much as the almost unbearable feeling of being stuck. Some call it depression, others angst. Existentialists and French people simply call it life.

As an American man in my early twenties, I felt a great deal of resentment surrounding a perceived cultural expectation to not only go out and build something solid in the world that makes a lot of money, but to be happy at the same time. I felt burdened by it all. Yes, I attended a great American university and got good grades. I even attended arguably the most prestigious graduate school in our nation afterwards with even better grades. However, it wasn’t before long that I found myself swimming in a sea of despair.

I was at that point of awareness that I believed I had the ability to do something great in the world but felt utterly clueless as to what that looked like or where to begin. I remembered my chosen High School yearbook quote with disdain: “The road to anywhere begins with where you are.” As a seventeen year old, this notion had felt hopeful and bold; as a young man with a Masters from Harvard teaming with strength, virility and visions, it felt a mockery.

I experienced a confusing paradox: While I felt melancholic and defeated, I also felt passionate and creative about ideas and beliefs. I was conscious for the first sustained period of my life of a personal relationship to my Source. As Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it: “Faith is a miracle, and yet no man is excluded from it; for that in which all life is unified is passion, and faith is a passion.” I truly felt that passion for life, however I felt paralyzed when it came to bridging the creative, spiritual impulses with actually doing something.

After a series of terrible challenges and general upheaval in my little world, I took leave of my non-lucrative position making bagels in suburbia, grabbed my tent and my dog and headed for the desert. I decided I needed another “vision quest.” However, in hindsight, this label at least that time, was a cover up for a desperate Hail Mary shot towards the end zone. I was at wits end and had no idea what else to do. I parked myself in the middle of the Mojave Desert where I had previously had positive experiences.

Not this time. I sat in my tent beneath the scorching sun and cried. I hiked atop the tallest mountains in sight with my dog and my walking stick as if getting as high up as possible to some imagined heaven would provide better acoustics when I pleaded my case for guidance. I sat and I sat. After six days, I felt more empty, hungry and miserable than I had been when I first arrived.

I didn’t hear a loud voice from above with clarity and grace directing me to some wonderful terrestrial assignment.

What I heard was a still, small voice from within me that said: “Stop hurting yourself. You do not have to suffer.” At the time, the awareness that I could leave the barrenness of the desert was a non-event. Ho-hum. I already felt like a spiritual “failure” not having been given the command from God Central to do great things. So, the notion that I could just pack up my sleeping bag and head home seemed fairly miserable in the grand scheme of things.

However, I would say there have been few more important lessons in my life. The understanding that I choose my suffering like I choose my coffee in the morning is as profound as they come. The consideration that I do not have to suffer in order to create change or forward movement in my life is monumental.

Not knowing what I want or can do to make a difference in the world is one thing. Knowing that I don’t have to beat myself up for that lack of clarity is another. The compassion around choosing to love myself along the journey (even when it feels like an impossibility that this could actually be my journey) is one of the deepest truths I have learned.

I hope it helps you on your journey.